In pictures: Building a cinema out of fridge doors

Hackney's known for being a cool part of London, but the
temperature just dropped a few degrees with a pop up cinema made of
fridges.

Located just behind the 2012 Olympic site, Films on Fridges harks
back to the contentious fridge mountain which was removed from the
site in 2008 following the successful Olympic bid. Mat Triebner,
co-founder of Scout Limited, the creative company behind the
project, explained the motivation to Wired.co.uk: "We heard people
talk about [the fridge mountain] as this slightly mythical piece of
iconography. We had an interest in temporary use rather than
large-scale urban intervention and that's how it all came
about."

The design brains behind the project belong to Emma Rutherford, an Urban
Design MA student, and together with a "core group of incredible
volunteers and a small army of people with some free times on their
hands," Films on Fridges came to life. However, as with any project
tied in with recycling and refuse waste, it needed some oversight
from the authorities.

Scout, who is also run by Lindsey Scannapieco, reclaimed the
fridges from a recycling plant in Wales in the absence of the
original fridge mountain. However, due to environmental restraints, they
were unable to use the whole of the object. Triebner says: "We
worked out we could use fridge doors. So we used two tons of them
all over the site in different ways -- a lot as cladding for
scaffolding and the bar area as well as the cinema wraparound.
Fridge doors are also being used as furniture as a hybrid with
chipboard."

Due to the potentially poisonous chemicals inside the fridge
doors, the environment agency guidelines dictate that they mustn't
be punctured. This posed one of the greatest challenges to the
team: "Figuring out a way of getting these things secured took a
lot of time." Triebner explained: "Fridge doors aren't a medium
people can really work in, and it's very difficult to learn that
trade and be the first to do something like this. We've seen
projects using fridges before but typically they've involved screws
or drilling holes. To pioneer a technology like this has been
amazing but challenging."

The answer lay in industrial-strength cable ties: "They're 50cm
long and quite thick. One of these thing could hold up a person --
I didn't even know cable ties like this existed," Triebner says.
Scout also tested industrial Velcro, and secured one door with it,
but found it didn't hold up to the rain.

Films on Fridges did initially create a screen out of the fridge
doors as well. However, they found that the picture quality was not
high enough. Instead, Films on Fridges' partner, independent cinema
company, Picturehouse, supplied
the project with an inflatable screen which could deal with the
area's changeable weather conditions. Triebner explains: "The site
is by a canal and the wind can be quite heavy. The inflatable
screen only takes 15 minutes to put up and a little longer to take
down, so it allows us to deal with that." Naturally, the screen
sits inside a frame made of fridge doors.

Films on Fridges are screening a range of sport-related films
until 13 August, you can check out listings here, and
view shots of the cinema in our gallery below.